Devoted to digging up Quincy railway history

Between 1958 and 1962, Richard Muzzrole single-handedly dug up key portions of the 1826 Granite Railway – America’s first commercial railroad, and an indelible piece of Quincy’s early history.

Jennifer Mann

In a humble, one-room apartment on Martensen Street, Richard Muzzrole lives on $10,000 a year, his memories and a penchant for preserving history. It has been years since the 87-year-old has returned to the West Quincy quarries where, as an amateur archaeologist in the late 1950s, he single-handedly dug up key portions of the 1826 Granite Railway, America’s first commercial railroad, and an indelible piece of Quincy’s history.

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Granite Railway information from the Thomas Crane Library

Muzzrole’s heart and mind are still with the railroad, as illustrated by the archaeological drawings that plaster his apartment walls.

The drawings meticulously detail his discoveries, borne from daily work from 1957 to 1962 when he uprooted trees, cleared tons of stone and soil, then painstakingly relaid granite railroad ties, or “sleepers,” to reveal the rail line’s mysteries.

It was from Quincy, “the granite capital of the world,” that horse-drawn rail carts hauled stones down the roughly 3 miles of railway for building the Bunker Hill Monument.

The city never paid Muzzrole for his work, and he received scant recognition considering the scale of what he unearthed. Still, he always returned – in 1987 to put finishing touches on his renditions, and until recent years, in weekly visits to the site to tend to the grounds.

Muzzrole said there is something about the railway – which represents not only Quincy’s roots, but the roots of many families and the country as a whole – that keeps calling to him.

“All this work. ... Well, it’s in your blood, I guess,” he said.

A wanderer finds his home

Muzzrole, who was born in Boston, spent his early life as a drifter. He left school after the seventh grade, and while still young, ran away from home.

He worked dozens of jobs, including as a logger and as a merchant sailor, before coming to Quincy in 1956 to assist Rolland Wells Robbins in his excavations of the John Winthrop Jr. iron furnace.

That might have been the extent of his stay in Quincy had Muzzrole not stumbled upon the memoirs of Solomon Willard, the architect and superintendent of the Bunker Hill Monument. Muzzrole bought the book, which detailed the early operations of the railway, for $1 at a second-hand bookstore in Boston.

“That was my bible,” Muzzrole recalled. “For years I carried it in my pack.”

AN UNSUNG HISTORIAN

Richard Muzzrole was never fully recognized by the city of Quincy for his work on America's first commercial railroad. But he had many followers, including The Patriot Ledger and reporter Draper Hill, who created a depiction of the Granite Railway based on Muzzrole’s findings.

“My understanding of an ‘amateur’ is one who receives no financial return for his efforts. This Dick certainly qualifies for; however, being like the two men who were responsible for the railroad and the monument, he is self-educated and extremely hard working, and knowledge that he has gained from his excavations would put many learned men with degrees to shame . . .Certainly, considering the tremendous job he has done, he is entitled to more recognition than the newspaper articles he has done in connection with his findings . . .” – Richard E. Scholes, of Braintree, “The Granite Railway and its Associated Enterprises, April 23, 1964.

“Richard Muzzrole is a detective who has an obsession with Quincy’s past. For years he dug on his own, moving tons of dirt and rock, unearthing significant details of the Bunker Hill Quarry. – Patriot Ledger editorial, Nov. 9, 1987, on Muzzrole’s return from Washington D.C. to finish the work he started in 1957.

Using Willard’s memoir as a guide, and with curiosity propelling him forward, Muzzrole began to dig up history.

He began his excavations at the railroad wharf in East Milton, at the elbow of the Neponset River, where the granite was loaded onto sloops that were tugged by the steamboat Robinhood to Charlestown.

From there, he made his way down the line, uncovering the site of the blacksmith shop; stone hammerer’s sheds where the granite was “dressed” and sized to fit the monument; the superintendent’s office; and various 19th,century tools that he donated to the Quincy Historical Society.

Through research, he learned of the first man to ever drive granite down the tracks: Louis Cheney of Chelsea, who in 1893 claimed to be the last survivor of those who built the railroad.

Muzzrole recalled hearing that work on the Southeast Expressway had interfered with about 200 feet of rail bed at the incline plane. He told workers he was a member of the historical society to buy six months’ worth of excavation time.

“I’m trying to save what’s left,” he told The Patriot Ledger in 1959, “before history comes in and covers it up.”

Muzzrole was the first to discover the “lost” Bunker Hill Quarry – the source of more than half the stone for the Bunker Hill Monument – and with it, the 140-foot sloping “timber run” where granite blocks were lowered to the railroad.

Muzzrole painted, washed dishes and shoveled snow to get by during those years, earning barely enough to pay the $10-per-week rent on his apartment above the city’s Chamber of Commerce.

During the days on the railway, neighborhood children would bring him sandwiches and help him work. They were his only family.

“I’m married to a railroad,” he once told the newspaper. “And it does not talk back to me, either.”

In 1962, Muzzrole took a job as an archaeology assistant at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. He worked nine years there and later supervised a series of digs of Colonial brick privies for the city of Alexandria, Va.

In 1987, he returned home. The railway was calling.

“I couldn’t get it off my mind,” he recalled. “I was lonely.”

Jennifer Mann may be reached at jmann@ledger.com.

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